How many of you are familiar with the sensation of a true free fall? Some of you know the feeling—that heart in your throat moment that occurs when gravity sucks you towards the Earth, and the only thing slowing you is the rush of air past your body. Perhaps you know it from the drop of a roller coaster, or, for the more adventurous, maybe from a cliff jump into water, or a leap from an airplane.
Kali, the main character in The Wormwood Trilogy, has a few moments of free fall within the pages of the story. I always do my best to describe things like this accurately. And I’m guessing you already know where this is going. Why do research alone when you can also draw on personal experience? Luckily, I’d had some!
Of Kali's two most serious falls, one—the 'easier' one—was a tumble from a clifftop. I'd done some jumping into bodies of water from various highish cliffs and bridges, so I was familiar enough with the sensation that I could write about it. Mostly. However, I was also planning to have Kali get dropped from way up in the sky in book 2, Angel of Shadow. In the end, I decided against writing the scene that way, so Kali never experienced that massive fall. But you know who has? Me! So... perhaps I'll need to make a different character take a great tumble at another time. Cue: evil laugh! ;-)
A number of years ago, my husband surprised me with an anniversary gift: a skydiving outing! This wasn't an ordinary skydiving excursion, either. The average height for skydiving is 10,000 feet (3048 metres). However, they had a special plane on this one day so skydivers could jump from 15,000 feet (4572 metres)—the maximum height allowed without requiring supplemental oxygen. This would give us almost a full minute of free fall before the deployment of our parachutes. As cool as that may sound, I panicked a bit when I found out what we were about to do. It turned out to be an incredible experience, though, and one I knew I'd be able to write about.
So, how does it feel? Well, you know that crazy feeling you get when your insides seem to float up, your breath—and even your scream—seem to get stolen as you plummet through the air? Well, here's the kicker: that sensation doesn't last. I noticed it shortly after I took that first, hairbrained leap out of the plane. After the first shock of falling passed, I found I equalized almost right away. I could breathe normally. Despite falling rapidly, my heart was no longer in my throat. It was the strangest thing. The air was absolutely frigid on my skin, though. It made me think of when Superman took Lois Lane flying and how unrealistic that was. Trust me, she would have frozen up there!
Now, don't get me wrong. The shock of falling is harsh. When I stood by that open door and the rushing wind practically pushed me over; when I leapt out over nothing and gravity grabbed my bones but seemed to forget to take my stomach; and when my breath caught as my only point of perspective—the plane—got smaller and smaller above me, I experienced all the sensations one might expect from such a crazy endeavor. Yet that was only about ten (long!) seconds of a full minute of free fall. It was after those ten eternal seconds that I could relax and take in the experience.
Too bad for my character, Kali, that she never got to fall recreationally. Okay, wait. I’m realizing how ridiculous that sounds. Although the experience truly got the adrenalin flowing, and despite the occasional need to push boundaries, maybe Kali was right to resist any instances of free fall.
Flying, however? Well, that’s a different story. Or, maybe I should say, a different newsletter!
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